Marketing Mix - Product
Marketing mix is made up of four inter-related decisions, which is commonly referred to 4Ps; product, price, promotion and place. These are the major factor in influencing whether a business can sell profitably, which is the aim of most of the marketing departments. * Product A good product is what customers demand. Giving the customers the good product is what customers require. Whether it is an existing product, an adaptation of an existing product or even a newly developed one. * Price Not only giving the right product but the product must come with the right and suitable price as well. Setting it too low would drop the customer’s confidence in the product’s quality. Setting it too high would unable or make the customers hesitant to afford it. Therefore, the product should come with the right price. * Promotion Promoting the product should be in an effective way. It should include the availability of the product and should be shown to convince the customers to choose the product. * Place It is essential for a business to inform the product distribution to the customers. If the product were not available in the right time and in the right place, even the best product in the world would not be bought in the expected quantities. These four are the most common Ps, however it is argued that tangible goods, people and the process of the customer accesses the service is as important as the original 4Ps. 4Ps are considered as rather old-fashioned and too centred on the firm and its product, when the ultimate user, the customer, also is important. An alternative view of the key elements of successful marketing then has been proposed, which is called as 4Cs; customer solution, cost to customer, communication with customer, convenience to customer. * Customer solution - It is the customer’s needs and wants that need to be fulfilled by the firm. * Cost to customer '– the total cost of the product. * '''Communication with customer '– firms need to provide updates and easily accessed communication links with customers. * 'Convenience to customer '– firms need to provide easily accessed information and convenience locations for buying the products. These 4Cs are all actually similar with the 4Ps; Product - Customer solution, Price - Cost to customer, Promotion – Communication with customer, Place – Convenience to customer. However, even though 4Cs are as important as the 4Ps, most of examiners tend to use 4Ps. Putting the customer first in marketing decisions is also important and this is called as the key feature of customer relationship marketing. '''Customer Relationship Marketing Customer relationship marketing is commonly shortened to CRM. The aim of CRM is actually to keep existing customers, so it is not necessarily to win new customers. In order to keep the existing customers, a business should gain the customer information, any information, for example like; the customer’s income, buying habits and so on. In order to keep the relationship between the business and the customer loyal and good, the product provided must be right. The product should have a good quality and also appearance to satisfy the costumer, and as well as the price. If the product doesn’t satisfy the customer, then no matter what the price is, it will not sell successfully in the long term. We have been talking about product, but what is actually the term product means? It is not only goods and services sold by a firm, but product is also includes the consumer and industrial goods and services. Some people might have mistaken between the term ‘product’ and ‘brand’. Product is basically just the general term to describe the object that is being sold. Brand is simply the name or symbol to differentiate one manufacturer’s products from another. New product development, or shortened as NPD, is normally based on striving to satisfy consumer needs that have been identified based on research. Developing new product is also quite expensive yet can’t guarantee success. Before developing or launching a product, we should position the product using market-mapping technique. The first stage, we should identify the features of the product considered to be important to customers, such as the price, quality of materials used, perceived image, level of comfort and so on. Category:Business Category:Marketing Category:Marketing Mix Category:Finance Category:Price & Product Category:Price Category:Product Category:Design Category:Promotion Category:Place Category:Business Studies Category:Money Category:Education Category:Studies Category:Science